Some of the tips here also apply to previous versions of Windows, but Windows 8 has some new tricks up its sleeve. As always, there are trade-offs when using some of the below tricks – there’s no magic “Go Faster” button.

Disable Time-Wasting Animations

Windows 8 (and Windows 7The Windows 7: Ultimate GuideThe Windows 7: Ultimate GuideIf you are afraid to upgrade from Vista or XP because you feel it is completely different to what you are used to, you should read this new guide.Read More) display animations when you minimize, maximize, open, or close application windows. The animations are slick eye-candy, but they do introduce a delay. You can disable the animations and window transitions will happen instantly, eliminating the delay.

To disable the animations, press the Windows key, type SystemPerformanceProperties, and press Enter. Uncheck the Animate windows when minimizing and maximizing option. You may also want to disable some of the other animations, such as the Fade or slide menus into view and Fade or slide ToolTips into view. This will make menus and tooltips snap to attention instead of fading in with an animation.

Applications using a lot of resources will be highlighted, making it easy to see which programs are using up your computer’s resources. This list also shows a simplified list of applications, which is easier to understand and skim than the old-style processes list (if you prefer the old-style process list, it’s still available on the Details tab).

Windows also analyzes how long each program takes to start and displays this information in the Startup impact column. Select a program and click Disable to prevent it from starting with Windows, speeding up your startup process.

Windows 8 also includes a SmartScreen feature, which analyzes how trustworthy programs you download are. As in previous versions of Windows, Windows also includes a firewall that blocks incoming connections. If you want more settings and options, you may want to install a third-party security suite – but most users will find that Windows 8’s included security programs are finally complete enough to rely on.

Modify Power Settings

Windows 8 uses power plans to determine whether battery life or performance should be prioritized, just as previous versions of Windows do. To view your power plan settings, press the Windows key, type Power Plan, click Settings, and press Enter.

In the default Balanced mode, Windows automatically reduces your CPU’s speed when maximize speed isn’t needed. This saves power. To squeeze all the performance you can out of your hardware, you may want to try High performance instead. In High performance mode, your CPU’s speed is never reduced. It runs at full speed all the time.

However, this isn’t necessarily a good thing. Even high-performance gaming PCs are used for web browsing some of the time and it doesn’t make sense to run the CPU at full throttle while browsing the web. This just wastes power and generates additional heat.

Whichever plan you choose, make sure you aren’t using Power saver. This is only useful if you want to squeeze as much battery life out of your laptop as possible.

Put Your Computer to Sleep

One of Windows 8’s most controversial aspects is the way it buries the Shut Down option in a hidden menuHow To Shut Down Windows 8How To Shut Down Windows 8Windows 8 brings the biggest changes to the familiar Windows interface since Windows 95. The Shut Down option isn’t where you’d expect to find it – in fact, the entire classic Start menu and Start...Read More. Microsoft wants to encourage you to use Sleep modeWindows 7 Power Options and Sleep Modes ExplainedWindows 7 Power Options and Sleep Modes ExplainedWhen Windows 7 launched, one of Microsoft's selling points was that it was designed to help your battery last longer. One of the main features users will actually notice is that the screen dims before...Read More instead of shutting down your computer. When you use Sleep, your computer goes into a very low-power state that uses just enough power to keep your programs and open files active in your computer’s RAM. When you come back to your computer, it will resume from sleep almost immediately. Using Sleep instead of Shut Down can dramatically speed things up when you sit down at your computer.

You’ll find a Sleep option under the power button in the Settings charm. (Press Windows Key+C, click Settings, click Power, and select Sleep). Your computer’s power button may also be configured to use Sleep automatically. You can change this option by clicking the Choose what the power buttons do option in the Power Options window mentioned above.

As on previous versions of Windows, click the Analyze button to see exactly how fragmented your file systems are.

Control Windows Indexing

The Windows indexing service automatically scans the files on your computer and monitors them for changes, allowing you to quickly search for files without waiting. Indexing uses some CPU time (and uses more CPU time if you frequently change a lot of files) so disabling it can help you reduce CPU usage.

Bear in mind that indexing speeds up searches. If you regularly use the Files search feature on the Start screen or the search feature inside Windows Explorer, you won’t want to disable indexing. You should only disable indexing if you don’t use the search feature.

To disable Windows Search, press Start, type services.msc, and press Enter. Scroll down in the list, locate the Windows Search service, right-click it and select Properties.

Set the Startup type box to Disabled, click the Stop button to stop the service, and click OK.

Instead of disabling the indexing service entirely, you may also want to control which folders Windows Search indexes. By default, it indexes your Users folders. if you have some folders full of files you don’t want to search, especially ones that frequently change, you may want to exclude these folders from being indexed. To control these settings, press the Windows key, type Indexing, click Settings, and press Enter.

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Anonymous

June 7, 2015 at 1:29 pm

my laptop is running slow every startup after acquiring grime that avast brought since I upgraded my avast anti virus.. and also when I put my laptop to sleep mode whenever I resume I have to spend thirty minutes waiting before I can continue to do my task.. and I don't know how to remove the grime.. I tried looking for solution in the internet but in only recommends to acquire a grime fighter but when i scrolled down to read the comments the said grime fighter is not working well, which actually my friend told me so, not to avail any because its a waste of money... so what should I do? I'm not a computer geek at the same time I'm only a new owner of laptop that doesn't know much about software and maintaining the performance of it.. hope you could help me.

man you answered you question your self or you just did not read it care fully firstly you said you upgraded you anti-virus and as stated by guide such program have high impact on start up you can change that should it be started as you laptop does you should it be started manually by you this can be done by pressing ctrl+alt+Delete then selecting task manages and from startup tap disabling it you might prefer to do so with a few other high impact programs too
now next step you said their is a slow start when you put it to sleep and then wake it up well it can be solved by 2 methods first is De-fragmentation which would allow you computer to load resources and programs faster and then changing your power setting to high performance as well as plugging it to power as laptop tent to give a lot of pressure on resources to help it survive battery life
now step 3
optimizing files manually well when your hard drives are full mostly C drive you main drive it slows down as in you C drive there is most of the programs meaning it takes more time to load this can be solved by removing and deleting junk files permanently from computer and recycling bin and also its a good idea to move most of the files to an other drive like D or E or to and external drive you can get 1 TB HDD hard disk drive at very low cost these days also you you are a kind of person who downloads a lot you should change you download location to a different Drive to help save some performance
now your computer should be some what optimized so well here are some other tips as well
you can open task manager and end programs which use high resources before putting your laptop to sleep and putting windows defender to work than avast will help on some performance
if you sill want to use avast use silent or gaming mode which would help some performance this can be done my opening task menu which is left to you clock on right down side and complete it by right clicking on avast icon and left clicking on silent mode

thanks for the tips! i definitely noticed that my computer became a lot more active after the upgrade (a lot more of the processor has been active even when i don't have many programs doing anything), which means that there have been lots of background programs eating at my battery.

I like it easy to access start and shut down process,firstly. It's an great experience to work with win 8,. it is an extraordinary , i like just because of their processing period ,it's really rocking, and their feature is unpredictable, and easily apps are available their, the more you have,the more you can do.....It's awesome !!!!!!!.

I like it easy to access start and shut down process,firstly. It's an great experience to work with win 8,. it is an extraordinary , i like just because of their processing period ,it's really rocking, and their feature is unpredictable, and easily apps are available their, the more you have,the more you can do.....It's awesome !!!!!!!.

I like it easy to access start and shut down process,firstly. It's an great experience to work with win 8,. it is an extraordinary , i like just because of their processing period ,it's really rocking, and their feature is unpredictable, and easily apps are available their, the more you have,the more you can do.....It's awesome !!!!!!!.

I like most things about Win 8 so far--yes there are the little annoyances like the missing start menu and lack of easy to access shut-down/re-start, etc. But a little tweaking and searching for work-arounds fixes those. The thing I find most disturbing is that even after several weeks of working with it I still feel "in the dark" a great deal of the time as to where things are and how things are set up and working. Much the way I do when working in Apple OS--everything is hidden, behind the scenes, and I'm just supposed to "assume" that it's all ok and working (and will continue to work). One of the key beauties about MS (vs Apple) is the openness that has always been inherent in the Windows environment, and I miss it. Maybe it's because I still remember the good(?) 'ol days of DOS with a certain degree of fondness. It feels like the weather is changing at MS and those in charge are caving in to the pressure to make things more "Apple-like."

The search term given for disabling animations doesn't produce any results in Windows 8 - what you want to do is press Winkey, type "adjust", click on "settings" then click on "Adjust the appearance and performance of Windows" to get the Performance Options dialog box shown above.

Defrag is a great idea, but if you have an ssd, you better disable it, the ssd drives have a number of times that could be recorded before die, and defrag is actually pretty hard on write times.
And, it doesn't help in anything on a ssd.

I'm not sure I know what "random lecture" speed is, but have an idea based on context. So would it be safe to say that contiguous blocks might actually be accessed a little faster, but not to any degree that is noticable, and certainly not worth the wear/tear and reduction of useful life? Thanks for the tutelage.

Hugo

December 13, 2012 at 1:48 am

There are basically two types of data reading/writing on any drive.
1.- The secuential. Is when two or more blocks of information from the same file are physically next to each other. (In hard drive disk, this is the optimum type of reading and writing).
2.- The random: This is where the blocks of the file are dispersed in the disk.

The defrag theory is that for a hard drive, who has mechanical parts, is better to read the files in a sequential way, for the "needle" who has to move severall times in a random data operation.
This doesn't make any sense in a ssd drive, for the reasons that i've explained in a previous answer.

(By the way, sorry if my english lacks a little, i'm chillean)

Jim

March 27, 2013 at 11:54 pm

Is this your pawn shop?

odiebugs

April 22, 2013 at 11:58 am

Win 8 will not defrag a SSD, win 8 has optimize for SSD's, what optimize does is sends TRIM command to the SSD, no one has to worry about defrag with SSD's.

Anyone running a RAID 0 array only has TRIM working, if they have a 7 series chipset. They can use a modded Intel option ROM for 6 series and X79 chipsets, And you must also use a RST driver with a version higher then the 11.6 version for win 8.

Do you have any clue of the life of a SSD. People don't even need to worry about TRIM, the newest SSD's, they have such a fast GC (garbage collection) that the LBA's get cleaned at idle points, it doesn't degrade the SSD having GC and not TRIM clean.

For the person who mentioned Windows Defender. Windows defender is the worst garbage on the planet, micro bought it when it was giant anti, since then micro has turned it into absolute garbage.

Please, anyone post the wild's that this junk has picked up.

Gdata, Bit defender, Avira, F-secure, Kaspersky, Norton, Eset, Avast, these are the top anti-virus out. There are a few free, like Avira and bit, avast, if you can't afford it.

MS config, working MS config to save CPU, go to the application, use their options and turn them off from startup.

thanks for your very good in detail explainations about these handy tools in windows 8,it will be very helpfull to me because i am using windows 8 proffessional.but there is a question and i found some answers for some problems that why third party app developers are taking long survays about windows 8 like anti virus companies.will they lost their chance with windows defender pre-installed?